


Feather of Harpy, Plume of Crow

by Mechanical



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fantasy, Harpies, Implied Sexual Content, Necromancy, One Shot, Original Fiction, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-22 13:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mechanical/pseuds/Mechanical
Summary: The necromancer’s dead things had hounded her all the way back to the old monastery, flapping after her on wings feathered with the stolen plumes of crows; stained and rotting, but horrifyingly fast all the same. The package strapped to her chest was heavy with supplies and duty. Above her, one of the corpse-creatures lunged, reaching out with talons tipped with broken finger-bones and the teeth of dogs.In a kingdom overrun with undead monsters, a small group of survivors has taken shelter in an abandoned old monastery. The harpy, Tarit, ventures out to the distant camp of the king as his army fights its way north, but the danger grows each time. There's someone waiting for her return, though - the bold royal knight, Dame Juniper.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Feather of Harpy, Plume of Crow

The necromancer’s dead things had hounded her all the way back to the old monastery, flapping after her on wings feathered with the stolen plumes of crows; stained and rotting, but horrifyingly fast all the same. The package strapped to her chest was heavy with supplies and duty. Above her, one of the corpse-creatures lunged, reaching out with talons tipped with broken finger-bones and the teeth of dogs.

Tarit brought in her wings and dived. The claws of the awful dead thing met nothing but air and it screamed as Tarit plummeted, the wind buffeting her and tearing away the smell of carrion. Below, the monastery grew from a grey dot into basilica and spire, closer until she could see the gods sculpted into each side of the tower – and a figure holding something metallic and with a foot propped on the parapet. The figure’s armour glinted in the dull light of dusk as they aimed up towards Tarit.

Tarit let herself fall towards the tower until she could see the whites of the figure’s – the woman’s - eyes, pupils piercing blue as they peered down the barrel of the musket – and she flared her wings, slowing down and going up above the woman’s head. The musket roared and the dead thing just behind Tarit disintegrated into rotten flesh and pieces of bone. The corpse-creatures screeched and those that could scattered upwards – one was too close to pull up, and the knightess smoothly shifted her grip and swung the musket like a club. The dead thing’s head detached with the impact, bouncing away into the dusk as the body landed and staggered wildly on the stone, malformed feet ill-suited for walking and hissing from contact with the holy masonry. The woman simply stepped up behind it and pushed – and it toppled over the parapet, to bounce itself to pieces off the stonework.

The knightess roared a challenge up at the skies, but the dead things above had seen how easily their companions were dispatched. With offended screams, they flapped up, out of reach and range of musket shot. With a dismissive _tch!_ , the knightess rested the musket on her shoulder. A calloused hand reached up to brush unruly blonde hair back from her eyes, and she turned her head to meet the harpy’s own gaze. She grinned, suddenly, and it gave a roguish charm to what was otherwise a sternly handsome visage. 

“Come on,” said Dame Juniper of Alhari, royal knight. “Let’s get inside.”

\---

The monastery had been abandoned for a good hundred years before, but the old mason-priests of the High Architectress had been masters of their work; sturdy stone worked as much as the lingering sanctity of the grounds in keeping out the necromancer’s howling works. 

What had been the kitchens had, over the weeks, morphed into the general living area for the disparate group that had found shelter here. Some of their limited firewood was burning in the oven, left open to cast a cheerful light into the room. A motley mix of men, women, and children – less than a dozen souls who had escaped or been guided here in those first frantic few days. All of them gathered round as the knightess unstrapped the package from Tarit’s chest, steady hands undoing the buckles. It thudded heavily on the table, and the harpy took the opportunity to sink down onto a chair. 

Now she was safe, the exhaustion of flying all day from the king’s encampment had time to creep into her limbs. She became aware of a dull ache in her wings and back, and rolled her shoulders to try and get the stiffness out. She cast her gaze along the others. In the earliest days, some had ventured out to get supplies, when the dead things were fewer, slower, weaker. Sometimes, there was talk of trying again, as if Juniper hadn’t had to hew down the things that had been Daryl or Parth, and Tarit wondered if one day she’d return to find spaces, fresh and open as knife-wounds, in the crowded little kitchen.

Marels and Terric, the two brown-haired bakers, were sorting out the little square biscuits of hard-tack and slabs of jerky which the survivors had been living off for weeks. Terric was a short, red-faced man, with a build that seemed near as wide as tall. He was unwrapping hard-tack and inspecting it for weevils as his gangly wife did the same for the jerky for poorly salted beef. Their son, Ruther, had inherited his father’s short height but his mother’s slim build. He regarded the hard-tack and jerky with dismay, one hand habitually tugging at the neck of his jerkin. 

Ulfa-osi was wrapped up in a ragged blanket, next to the fire but still shivering. The priest’s dark skin was pale and waxy, the veins standing out. He’d been bitten by one of the dead things in the expedition which had lost Daryl and Parth, and without medicine the bite had grown rotten. Now his eyes were glassy and dull, as the sickness drained him out like the suck of a leech.

Old man Gurral was sat in one of the chairs, not having stood up with the others. Age had wrinkled him on himself until he was like crumpled leather, and his hands – stained with a hundred chemical concoctions – were no longer steady. Instead, the apothecary’s daughter, Sara, sorted through the herbs and poultices Tarit had brought back, deciding which one would best stop the fever from burning Ulfa-osi up to nothing.

She felt a little tug on her breeches, and looked down at the tiny round face of the kid, framed by uncombed long hair. Juniper had fought her way to the monastery with the child over her shoulder, pulled away from the red ruins of her parents, and the little one had never said a word. Fighting against her tiredness, Tarit swept up the kid and wrapped her wings around her, and soon she was peeking out from a nest of feathers like a blanket.

She opened her eyes to raised voices, and realised sleep had crept up on her for a moment. Ruther was brandishing a pouch of hard-tack like a warbanner, staring up at Dame Juniper. The knightess was gazing down at him, her face neutral, but Tarit could read the slow anger bubbling up in the set of her shoulders.

“-Sick of it!” he was yelling. He jabbed a bony finger at her, and Tarit felt the kid hide behind her wings like a shield. “Tarit gets to stuff her belly at the king’s camp, and we get this-”  
“Quiet,” rumbled the Dame, and the iron in her voice snapped his jaw shut like a trap. He swallowed, heavily, his throat bobbing. “Tarit risks her life each time she flies to bring back anything at all. If it’s not enough-” In one swift motion, she strode to the door, yanking up the bar and throwing it open. Cold air rushed in, ruffling the harpy’s feathers and making the fire dance wildly in its hearth. The sounds of night – insects and wind, filtered into the room. “Go and search yourself, amongst the beasts.” 

The young man glanced between her and door, back and forth, like a metronome. He swallowed once, and opened his mouth – and somewhere in the dark, the undulating scream of some dead thing resounded, cracking open the night. Other calls rose like the howls of desperate wolves, and the youth paled.  
“F-fine!” he gasped. “Just – just shut the door!”  
Juniper regarded him for a second longer, before she slammed it shut, the bar clacking back into place. Ruther stared back, wide-eyed, for just a moment longer, before he turned and fled to deeper in the monastery. 

There was a tight moment of silence in the room. What had been comfortably warm now felt stifling, airless. It lasted until Juniper clapped her hands.  
“It’s late. Sara, if you’d do what you need to do with Ulfa? The rest of us should get to bed. Things are always grimmest in the dark.”  
With muttered comments, the group began moving. Marels held out her hands for the child, and she obediently wriggled free of the encompassing wings. Tarit watched her go, until suddenly arms looped under her wings and knees. With a squawk, she found herself held aloft to Juniper’s chest.  
“Good night,” Juniper said, nodding, and turned to bear the harpy away up the stairs. Behind her, she heard chuckles drifting out the room.

As they climbed the spiralling stairs, her talons occasionally scraping against the time-worn engravings of beatific gods, she ignored the heat on her cheeks.  
“Did you have to do that?” She muttered, and felt the rumble of amusement in the knightess’ chest.  
“Now they’re going to sleep on a laugh, rather than brooding on the argument,” Juniper said, reasonably. “Though if you dislike being carried so, I can, of course, put you down.”  
Tarit glanced away, glad of the dark hiding her blush.  
“...I didn’t say that,” she muttered at last, and knew Juniper was smiling, even though she refused to look. 

\---

The two had occupied a room half-way up the tower. Perhaps it had once been the abbot’s chambers, as the engravings here were finer, and a wood veneer, having lost its grandeur, served as suitable feedstock for a fireplace flanked by little carven masons. The sharing of their room had inspired teasing from the others, which had slowly become more accurate as the weeks wore on, but harpies were social creatures. Tarit would endure a hundred years of good-natured teasing to huddling alone in the dark. 

Juniper shed her equipment – her sword and dagger in their supple leather sheaths; the straps hung with gunpowder horns, wads and shot; her gleaming cuirass emblazoned with the great elk of the royal knights; the thick tan leather of her buff coat. With each layer, Juniper became less the Dame and more a tired woman, as if she was peeling open the shell around her worries. Eventually she was clad just in her smallclothes, the moonlight from the arrow-slit window casting slivers of her in silver; the sides of her face, the muscles at play in her arm as she moved it, the side of her breast, no longer bound beneath silk strips and steel. 

Tarit watched this transformation, then let Juniper undo the strings that kept her own clothing on. Harpy legs were far more flexible, feet more agile, but there was a limit to what could be done with talons and no thumbs. She let the cloth loosen before she shimmied out of her halter and breeches, her modesty guarded by the rufous feathers of her chest and waist. 

No bed had usably survived the long years of abandonment, but Tarit’s first journey to the king’s encampment had brought back a bundle of bedrolls, and they served adequately enough with some scavenged blankets. Juniper slid between the covers next to the harpy, and Tarit nestled into her until the back of her head rested against the knightess’ chin. Unbidden, the woman’s hands began running through her feathers, from the thick crest around her collarbones to where they faded to soft down around her ribs to the smooth skin of her stomach, stopping where the feathers began once again at her hips.

“Do you think Ruther…?” Tarit began, but Juniper shook her head.  
“He’ll get over it. Gods know, though, I’ve eaten enough hard-tack on campaign. If I’d had nothing but it for four weeks, I’d want to strangle someone, too.”

For a moment, they were silent, nothing but the sound of their breathing in the dark room and the soft movement of Juniper’s hands through her feathers, before Tarit spoke again.  
“They’re getting faster,” she said softly. She thought of the stolen feathers of crows, and wondered if a harpy’s plumes would make them quicker still. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go much more. And the king’s army is moving slower-”  
Juniper pressed a kiss to the back of her head.  
“A problem for tomorrow, heart,” she whispered. “But we’ll cope, one way or another. Sleep now.”  
She wrapped her arm around the harpy, and soon only the soft sound of the two women sleeping filled the room.

\---

In the end, she stayed for three days. The piles of hard-tack and jerky would last a long time, hoarded miserly, and the medicine had soothed Ulfa-osi’s fever to less than an inferno in his blood. Sara talked to her of alchemy, in oft-diverted diatribes that she understood little of, while her old father sat and occasionally contributed with a _hhmmph_ of agreement (or perhaps disagreement, for they were much the same sound). Marels and Tarric spoke of more understandable things – their town and customers, their bakery, and while it was nothing she hadn’t heard before, there was comfort in the repetition. Their son mostly stayed out her way, for which she was grateful.

She wrapped the child in her feathers and told her of flying, of the distant, steaming homeland of her people, long lost – or played hide and seek, concealing herself in the cellar and never minding the dust on her feathers.

She spent time with Juniper, watching her polish non-existent dirt off her breastplate and blade, and listening to her soothing. They snatched moments of passion, Tarit’s head tucked into Juniper’s shoulder to stifle her gasps, and afterwards she traced her pinions along the Dame’s scars and asked how she got them.

But the slower progress of the king’s army as they ground their way north through countless horrors lingered in the back of mind, and eventually the fear of if she didn’t go overcame the fear of going. At the crack of dawn, they gathered to see her off. Each wished her well, and Juniper gave her an easy grin.  
“You’ll be fine,” she said calmly. “Fly safe, Tarit.”

The harpy paused. Words unsaid rose in her chest – only to stick to her tongue, and in the end she just nodded. She turned to head up the stairs when an iron grip landed on her shoulder. Gurrel’s hand still trembled with age, but his eyes were sharp as they glinted beneath his beetle-brows. The old man made a deep rumbling hum, like a tombstone grinding in his chest.  
“That lady’s been worrying all the time you’re away. You hurry back now. “  
He let go, and ignoring the knightess’ protests that she’d ever need to worry, hobbled back to the fire to heat his old bones.

\---

The encampment was nestled in an ugly slurry of fortifying ditches and stakes. Torches and lanterns burned in a circle around it, although it wasn’t yet dusk, and from above she could see the tiny pale coins of frightened faces, peering upwards. The crackle of musket fire stabbed the air at irregular intervals, like the pain of a wound half-forgotten. The king’s army had been grinding their way north for weeks, and desperation and anger and fear hung like a pall over the camp, so thick it filled her nose like the smoke from bodies piled upon bonfires. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if they were monster or human, and averted her eyes on the chance to see closer.

A wing of the king’s harpies flew out to meet her as she began to approach. A glance upwards showed two flying higher, out of her sight line – ready to swoop down if she’d been a dead thing, their talons tipped in silver spikes clumsily hammered out by some blacksmith. Each of them wore the green-and-blue of the skyguard, and they chirped welcomes when they saw her face. 

As soon as they’d landed, they swarmed her. For a moment, Tarit was lost in a melee of excited wings and feather, as each tried to get close.  
“Tarit! Tarit!” one of them called in joy. “You’ve returned, sister!”  
“We didn’t think we’d see you again, sister,” another called. “We’ve been fighting monsters every day and night! There’s so many of them!”

“Enough, enough!” barked another. Tarit recognised the brown feathers and severe features of Dart, the golden sashes tight around her body indicating her command. She looked at Tarit, tucking her wings in.

“Will you be staying this time, sister?” The tone was not unkind, but resigned; Dart seemed to know what reply she’d get.  
“Only a night,” Tarit replied, as she had all the other times, a habit on the way to tradition. Dart smiled grimly.  
“It must be nice being among sisters again,” Dart said conversationally, as they made their way to the tent set up for the king’s harpies. Bedrolls had been set up in a mass in the centre, and harpies not on the wing lay tucked against each other, looking exhausted even in sleep. A few groomed each other, speaking softly as they gently tended to ruffled feathers. She was provided food, beef stew, and she felt a pang of guilt as she thought of the others eating hard-tack, even as she carefully poured more into her mouth from a wide, flat bowl held carefully between her wings.

She spent the night, huddling with the skyguard not on duty. It was nice, having another harpy to groom her feathers, and sisters on either side when she sleep, but she couldn’t help but feel they lacked the solid presence of Juniper as a bedmate. In the morning, a haunted-looking quartermaster loaded her a pack with more medicines, those metal-hard biscuits, a parcel of beef, wrapped in cloth.  
“Something to keep morale up,” Dart said. “To make a change from hard-tack.”

“This will be the last time,” Tarit told Dart as she gave an experimental flap and jump, making sure the package was seated central and steady.  
“I’d have suggested the same if you hadn’t,” the skyguard commander gravely replied, a thoughtful frown on her features. “You should have enough to last, and it’s getting too dangerous for you to fly alone.”  
The two looked at each other.  
“Tarit.” The skyguard met her gaze for a long moment. “Don’t go, sister. You won’t make it back.”

Tarit thought of a priest burning through with fever, and a squat baker and his gangly wife. She thought of their blustery son, of an ancient alchemist and his gentle-voiced daughter. She thought of a mute little girl. She thought a strong knightess, and the tenderness of her touch, and how she wouldn’t know if she was dead or not if she didn’t return. She thought of the stolen plumes of crows.

Dart saw the answer in her eyes before she answered, and simply nodded. 

“Fly safe, sister. We’ll guard you as far we can.”

\---

She wasn’t going to make it back. 

The dead things had waited for her escorts to peel away back to the encampment before they’d risen for her or dropped from distant heights above. Everywhere she turned, more of the winged corpses had been, blocking her in with carrion claws and raucous cries until her ears were ringing with hateful screams.

She flapped and soared, twisting and turning over abandoned fields and damaged homes now haunts to monsters. It wasn’t so far – she recognised the windmill, there, but the dead things were shepherding her away, no matter how quickly or cleverly she juked them, and constant exertion was spreading burning roots through her lungs and wings. 

She banked desperately, and she avoided another of the shrieking monsters. She felt a brief moment of hope before another filled her vision, claws reaching and she couldn’t dodge- 

The collision hit like a hammer from the gods. Her breath exploded out of her at the impact. The harpy and the dead thing span wildly as they dropped, putrid claws dug into her wings, scrabbling at her legs with its own. The corpse’s hand slammed into her chest, grasped flesh, and yanked – it came out and it let Tarit fall, eyes blurred with tears of pain as she plummeted. It took a second of her heart hammering wildly and futile gasping for breath for her to realise she wasn’t dead, she was still alive, the dead thing’s hand had torn open her package and pulled out something inside rather than plucking her heart from her chest, she was still alive-

Up above, the dead thing screeched in fury, realising its failure. It dived after her, and Tarit forced herself to move again. She’d been driven to the east, she’d need to go west rather than north to reach the monastery. Please, oh gods, let her reach the monastery. Without the package, she was lighter, less burdened, but she’d not had a chance to catch her breath properly. Every movement had pain spike through her chest like breathing needles.

She’d lost so much altitude, she was barely avoiding skimming the treetops. Behind her, to the sides, corpses came for her, their screeches drowning out even the sound of the wind, even her own thoughts, and there – the tower attached to the basilica, rising up like a beacon.

The trees ahead were giving way to the edge of the forest, where the scattered stones of what was once the outer wall showed the boundary of the monastery grounds, when a dead thing leap from below. She tumbled-

The pain in her wing brought her back. Her feathers had protected much of her from cuts and scrapes, but pain flared along her flanks. One of her wings was limp and useless, spread out unresponsive on the ground. The screeches of dead things as their prey suddenly dropped and their overshot spiked fear back into her belly. She was so close but she couldn’t fly-

She scrabbled towards the monastery on legs and wing. Let her reach it, oh-

Claws dug into her leg and dragged her back. Another of the monsters landed to the side and snatched at her limp and useless wing, and the savage yank it gave it forced a scream out of Tarit’s lung. Blindly she kicked backwards, and felt her talons rake across sloughing flesh. Something popped beneath her talons, and the screech of one of the dead things told her she’d taken an eye. She flailed her functioning wing at the one gripping at her pinions, and it howled but held on. It pulled again, and the pain made her vision blacken.

The one she’d kicked recovered, and it grabbed her head, pulling it back for its other hand to rip her throat out, Tarit thrashing-

-And a piece of shot scored a burning line along her cheek as a musket blast hurled the monster back. The other looked up just in time for Juniper’s sword to take its head, then its hand before the knightess savagely kicked it away.

“Tarit!” she called, and the harpy’s heart twisted at her tone, rage and fear and relief. More hands grabbed her, and she screamed again, but these were human. She heard familiar voices through the animal panic-  
“Carry her, quickly!”  
“Watch her wing, Ruther!”  
Dragged backwards, she could see the form of the knightess, her face wrathful and implacable as the great goddess carved into the tower. Dead things boiled out of the woods and the air, howling, only to meet their end at her sword. The sabre was quicksilver fast, every blow hewing off necrotic limbs or heads. The knightess was stepping back, keeping pace with those carrying back Tarit, until suddenly a doorway swallowed the harpy. With a final savage slash, the knightess turned and leaped inside, and Gurrel waiting ready slammed it shut. 

The monsters hammered and clawed at the door, but the holy ground drove them off one-by-one, and eventually there was no sound but the panting of breath as each stared about at the others, wide-eyed but alive, alive, alive. 

\---

Tarit only realised she must have passed out when she regained consciousness, wakefulness returning slowly like water dripping into a still pond. She felt the ache of her wounds, but the lack of edge to the pain meant they’d given her something. Her wing had been set, and wrapped in a great sea of bandages; Tarit recognised the fabric as belonging to Sara’s dress. A warm weight was pressed in next to her, and she looked down to the top of the child’s head. Her tiny shoulders moved slowly, steadily, in sleep. 

An intake of breath next to her drew her attention. Juniper, her breastplate discarded stared down at her with gentle eyes.  
“Hey,” the Dame said softly, and Tarit felt the corners of her mouth twitch in a tiny smile.  
“Hey,” she whispered back. “How long-”  
“Maybe a few hours. You were in and out of consciousness a lot. Sara said you probably hit your head pretty hard. No flying for a while.”  
Tarit croaked out a laugh.  
“I’m not going to argue that. I’m just- I’m just glad you-”  
Her body seized up, and she fought not to sob. Gently, Juniper took her uninjured wing in her hands.  
“It was the kid. She spotted you coming in, yelled. Never heard such a loud voice from so small a body. Must have been saving it up.”  
The humour was weak, but Tarit hitched out a snort-sob anyway.  
“None of them hesitated,” the knightess continued. “They were right out there besides me, though I was the only one in armour… or armed.” She frowned. “I left my musket out there. That’s a shame.”  
A hesitant knock on the door interrupted her, and it creaked open a slit.  
“Is she awake?” She heard Merils’ voice, and perhaps something tipped her off, because the door swung open. Behind her, the corridor was crowded with the others, and their voices rose in a hubbub when they saw her awake. Besides her, the child was startled back to wakefulness. She stared up at Tarit with eyes already being to tear up, before she buried her head in the harpy’s side with a thump. Ignoring the fresh ache, she awkwardly tucked the girl beneath her bandaged wing before she looked up the others.

“Thank you. I’m back,” she said, and didn’t think of the stolen plumes of crows.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this one is: "We had somebody upthread asking about romance stories with monsters and I thought seemed interesting, if you wanted to take a try at that."
> 
> I'd like to do more with Tarit and Juniper, or indeed this setting, in the future, but I don't currently have any plans.


End file.
